If you are like many Americans, you are concerned about the growing achievement gap between rich and poor children. It is the not-so-secret epidemic happening in plain sight. By 2020, more than 65% of American jobs will require at least a four-year college degree, meaning that less affluent children who are failing to do well in elementary and high school right now are preparing to be left out of economic opportunity and will continue the disastrous cycles of generational poverty, community violence, and mass incarceration.

Just as children suffering from chronic hunger are listless, lethergic, unfocused and thus have grave difficulty attending to a school lesson, so do children suffering from chronically low self-esteem experience similar challenges. Just as poverty is toxic to the child's brain, flooding cerebral areas essential for learning with the stress hormone/neuro-chemical cortisol, so is diminshed self-worth toxic to the mind and heart of a child.

Only moments before I had brought up the anecdote of my 7-year-old daughter’s experience at a spelling bee in which everyone won because the children who were not prepared to do well were given on-the-spot assistance from a teacher; I employ the anecdote as a vehicle to discuss my deep conviction that when we shield children from failure we are invariably denying them an opportunity for growth.